Taking cues from OnePlus, Oppo VP resigns to focus on Realme brand

Oppo is the fourth largest smartphone vendor in India, but the company hasn’t traditionally been known for excelling in the value smartphone segment. Instead, Oppo, along with Vivo, has focused on offline marketing and offline retail to sell phones in the mid-range smartphone market, with the Oppo F7 being a prime example. This means that the company’s phones haven’t been able to compete with vendors such as Xiaomi, Honor, and Asus.

This changed in May when Realme, a new online exclusive sub-brand of Oppo, launched the Realme 1, a variant of the Oppo F7 which shared quite a lot of specifications. The phone has already sold 400,000 units in 40 days in India. Sky Li, former vice president of Oppo and head of Oppo’s overseas business, has now officially resigned from Oppo and founded Realme—a new technology brand. Mr. Li had previously served Oppo India as the country head, and now joins Realme as global CEO. Realme started off in May as a sub-brand of Oppo.

In a letter to Realme employees, Mr. Li introduced the new Realme brand and mentioned that the idea of creating the brand was born at the end of 2017. Realme has started off on the same path as OnePlus. OnePlus was founded when Peter Lau left Oppo and registered OnePlus as a new company.

Mr. Li, the founder of Realme, has led Oppo to grow from a company that was available in three markets to one that covers 31 countries and regions including Southeast Asia, South Asia, Middle East, Africa. He wrote in the letter: “Before leaving Oppo officially, I’ve been in charge of OPPO’s global overseas market during these past few years, leading OPPO to grow from the business available in 3 markets to one that covers 31 countries and regions. The overwhelming response and trust from the young generation is something that has encouraged me to launch the new brand Realme.”

Realme is said to be focusing on the ₹10,000-₹20,000 price range with its products for the Indian smartphone market. The brand has already gained over 1 percent share in the second quarter with one month’s sales in India, according to Counterpoint Research. It’s currently sharing production lines with Oppo and India, and has adopted an “India-first” approach to gain a majority of market share in India’s online channels. As part of this strategy, Realme will launch all new products in India first before introducing them to any other global market.

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OnePlus 6 sales helped OnePlus beat Samsung in India’s premium market

A new report from Counterpoint Research states that OnePlus beat Samsung to lead the premium smartphone market in India for the first time ever for a full quarter. This makes the company the leader of the Indian premium smartphone segment, and what’s remarkable here is the amount of time it took for OnePlus to achieve this. OnePlus entered the Indian smartphone market in December 2014, and in less than four years, the company now leads the premium segment.

According to Counterpoint Research’s latest analysis on the Indian smartphone market, the premium smartphone segment (₹30,000 and above) grew 19 percent annually and 10 percent sequentially during Q2 2018. This was because more consumers upgraded to 2018 flagship smartphones launched by different Android device makers in India. The increase in demand in the premium segment was driven by increasing offers around the new launches as compared to a year ago, with offers ranging from cashbacks, data-bundling, exchange offers, and more to reduce the affordability gap.

The strong sales of the OnePlus 6 led OnePlus to surpass Samsung to lead the premium smartphone segment in India in Q2 2018. Counterpoint noted that India remains an important market for OnePlus, contributing to almost a third of its global revenue. The user base of the company has been growing with every flagship, and this has now started into record sales for every new flagship launch. OnePlus is benefiting from strong word of mouth marketing, and the company is also leveraging social media effectively to reach out to its target user base.

Samsung captured over a third of the total premium smartphone market in Q2, and promotions for the Samsung Galaxy S9 series remained strong. On the other hand, Apple had a weak Q2 as demand for the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X began to taper off due to seasonality and challenges in terms of pricing after the increase in custom duty. Apple is said to be streamlining its channel structure as it gears up for the second half of the year.

While the premium market grew but the demand is being skewed towards sub-INR40,000 devices due to aggressive offering such as OnePlus and that through online segment. This is a new trend where “affordable ultra-premium” is wooing aspiring rich and young consumers away from more expensive offerings from likes of Samsung and Apple. With likes of OPPO, Huawei, vivo and Google looking to be aggressive in INR40,000-60,000 segment in coming quarters, pressure on likes of Apple and Samsung will be even higher.

The top three brands Samsung, OnePlus and Apple contributed to 88% of the overall premium market as compared to 95% a quarter ago.

This is due to the entry of new players in the segment led by Huawei (P20), Vivo (X21), Nokia HMD (Nokia 8 Sirocco) and LG (V30 Plus)

OnePlus led the premium smartphone segment for the first time ever in India, capturing 40% of the market driven by record shipments of its OnePlus 6 as compared to its previous flagships.

OnePlus was also the fastest growing brand in the premium segment (+446%) while shipments for Apple and Samsung declined YoY.

OnePlus is now increasing its points of sale by launching its offline and exclusive stores across key cities. This will enable the brand to reach out to a larger user base going forward, as the premium segment market is estimated to grow faster than the overall smartphone market in India for CY 2018 and beyond.

Samsung captured 34% share of the premium segment. Its shipments declined 25% YoY due to decline in shipments of S9 as compared to S8 last year. However, the promotions related to S9 series remain strong which helped to push sales in both offline as well as online channels during end of the quarter to streamline the inventory levels.

Apple’s share in the premium segment reached its lowest ever 14% due to decline in shipments for its iPhone 8 and X series. Additionally, the increase in import duty and absence of local manufacturing impacted its pricing strategy in India. Apple is also looking to streamline its channel structure in India.

Cashback and EMI offers continue to remain the major promotional activities leveraged by brands in the premium segment, with cashback being used by 8 out of 10 models in the premium segment in the online channel.
In terms of best selling models, OnePlus 6 was the best-selling model in premium segment followed by S9 Plus and OnePlus 5T. OnePlus 5T sales were due to the push by the brand during first half of Q2 2018, clearing off inventory in anticipation of OnePlus 6. However, OnePlus 5T went end of life post OnePlus 6 launch.

S9 series sales remain skewed in favour of S9 plus as users didn’t mind spending extra for the upgrade to a larger screen.

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Source: Counterpoint

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Enable YouTube dark theme on Android without root or modified APKs

Back in March, Google announced that the YouTube mobile app for Android and iOS would get a dark mode. That dark theme rolled out for iOS users almost immediately but has taken months to reach the Android version. In fact, Google only recently started testing the dark theme for a handful of users. For those of you who like to tinker with your device, you probably know that YouTube’s dark theme has been accessible on Android for months—provided you’re willing to root your device or install a modified APK. For those of you who either don’t want to root your device or sideload a modified version of the YouTube app, you’ll have a long wait ahead of you before the feature rolls out for your device. But if you don’t want to wait, we found a way to enable YouTube for Android’s dark mode without root and without modifying the APK.

If you want your YouTube app on Android to look like this, then read on.

Just like many of our previous tutorials, we’re going to be using a handy tool called “ADB” for this little trick of ours. ADB, or the Android Debug Bridge, is a computer tool that developers use to interface with their device. It offers a bunch of useful debugging tools, one of which allows users to backup and restore their application data. We’re going to be taking advantage of ADB’s backup and restore functionality to forcefully enable YouTube’s dark mode.

Enabling it is a piece of cake—the process should take seconds if you already have ADB set up. If you don’t have ADB set up, you’ll have to go through that process before you can proceed. We recommend you do set up ADB access for your smartphone, though, as it opens up a wide range of hidden customization options that normally aren’t available (such as system-wide, rootless custom themes on Android 8.0 Oreo and Android 8.1 Oreo.) If you’re comfortable with that and want to get YouTube for Android’s dark theme, then here’s how. We’ll explain exactly how this works after the step-by-step instructions.

How to Enable YouTube’s Dark Theme on Android

Many thanks to xfileFIN on our Discord server for sharing this method with us.

YouTube (Free, Google Play) →

1. Make sure you’re up to date on the latest version of the app by downloading it from the Google Play Store above.
2. If you haven’t already, download the latest platform-tools for your operating system so you can use ADB.
3. Download “YouTubeDarkTheme_XDA.zip” from AndroidFileHost.
4. Extract “YouTubeDarkTheme_XDA.ab” from the zip file and place it in the platform-tools folder where the ADB binary is located.
5. Open up a command prompt or terminal window in the directory where ADB is located and enter the following command depending on your OS:

   Windows Command Prompt: adb restore YouTubeDarkTheme_XDA.ab
   

   Windows Power Shell: .\adb restore YouTubeDarkTheme_XDA.ab
   

   macOS Terminal: ./adb restore YouTubeDarkTheme_XDA.ab
   

   Linux Terminal: ./adb restore YouTubeDarkTheme_XDA.ab
   

   

6. You should see a message telling you to unlock your phone and confirm the restore operation.
7. On your smartphone, you should see a fullscreen prompt requesting you approve a “full restore of all data.” Accept it without entering a password (the file we made doesn’t need one). Pressing “Restore My Data” will not wipe or replace any of your phone’s data (except YouTube’s settings, which is our goal here), so don’t worry.
8. After a few seconds, the fullscreen prompt should disappear. If you are already in the YouTube app, it should reload with the dark theme present. If you weren’t already in the app, just open it up and it should load with the theme. There’s a small chance YouTube might force close, but this can safely be ignored by just re-opening the app.
9. Congratulations, you should now have YouTube for Android’s dark theme enabled! You won’t see the toggle in settings, so if you want to turn off the dark mode you’ll have to clear YouTube’s app data.

We don’t like showing our readers a cool tweak without explaining how it works, so if you’re wondering what in the world we’re actually doing, the next section of the article is for you.

How it works

Every Android application stores their data in a location that’s only accessible to that app. For YouTube, that location is in /data/data/com.google.android.youtube. Within this location is the “shared preferences” folder which contains XML files that hold the app’s settings. The youtube.xml file contains the preferences that define whether the app should display the dark theme (among other things). By default, that preference value is false. Manually modifying this value to be true requires root access because all files within /data (excluding /data/media, which requires the appropriate external storage permissions to read/write) are inaccessible to third-party apps without root. But we can take advantage of built-in, first-party tools to work around that restriction.

The files in the “shared preferences” folder can be backed up manually by ADB or automatically to Google Drive if the app allows it. We can take advantage of the former backup method by preparing our own modified “backup” file to restore that contains a modified youtube.xml with the dark theme preference set to value. That’s exactly what was done here—we took a YouTube ADB backup, unpacked it, modified it, and then re-packed it all using this tool. You can unpack the .ab file we made yourself to verify its contents if you like. Restoring this .ab file overwrites the original youtube.xml file, thus forcing the dark mode value to be set to true.

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WhatsApp rolls out group video and voice calling

WhatsApp is the most popular IP-based messaging app worldwide, but it still suffers from feature limitations. The company has steadily increased the app’s feature set in the last few months, adding the ability to switch from a voice call to a video call in the middle of a call, new group features including user search, the ability for group administrators to block users from sending messages in a group, and a Mute shortcut button for WhatsApp notifications in Android. The company has started labeling messages as forwarded. It’s also developing a “Mark as Read” shortcut button for notifications.

Now, WhatsApp is rolling out group voice and video calls. The company originally rolled out voice calling in 2015, and added video calling later. The company states that its users spend over 2 billion minutes on calls per day. Users ca now make a group call with up to four people. The procedure to do so is simple: Start a one-on-one voice or video call and tap the “Add Participant” button in the top right corner to add more contacts to the call.

WhatsApp states that group calls are always end-to-end encrypted. The company also claims to have designed calling to work reliably around the world in different network conditions. The group voice and video calling feature is now rolling out both in the Android and iPhone versions of the app.

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Source: WhatsApp

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Xiaomi Mi A2 camera app gets ported to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro

The Xiaomi Mi A2 is a recently launched Android One device, and its camera on paper seems pretty great. For those on the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro (whyred), there’s some great news for you. You can now download the Xiaomi Mi A2 camera application for use on your phone on a custom ROM, ported by XDA Senior Member carlosggb. All you need is Magisk and you’re good to go. Previously, one of the only options available to people was the Google Camera app. Now you can use an official Xiaomi application for photo taking instead if you want. You can check out the thread below to download and flash the Magisk module. You will need the camera2api enabled as well.

Xiaomi Mi A2 Camera Ported for Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro

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Asus ZenFone 5Z with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage now available on Flipkart

In recent years, OnePlus has been the strongest smartphone vendor in the affordable premium smartphone market in India. There was a time recently when the company faced almost no competition in the ₹30,000-and-above price segment. Last year, the OnePlus 5T was better than most of its alternatives in the price range. This year, however, both Honor and Asus have arrived in the affordable flagship segment. In particular, the Asus ZenFone 5Z aims to one-up OnePlus in the affordable flagship segment, as the phone has competitive specifications while managing to significantly undercut the OnePlus 6 in terms of pricing.

The Asus ZenFone 5Z was announced back at Mobile World Congress in February. It arrived in India on July 4 in three variants: 6GB of RAM with 64GB of storage, 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage, and 8GB of RAM with 256GB of storage. At launch, the top-end 8GB RAM/256GB storage variant was not available, and Asus stated that it would be available soon. Now, the variant is available on Flipkart.

The phone’s specifications are listed below:

Specifications	Asus ZenFone 5Z
Dimensions and weight	153 x 75.65 x 7.7 mm, 165g
Software	ZenUI on top of Android 8.0 Oreo
SoC	Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (4x Kryo 385 Gold cores clocked at 2.8GHz and 4x Kryo 385 Silver cores clocked at 1.8GHz); Adreno 630 GPU
RAM and storage	8GB of RAM with 256GB UFS 2.1 storage; hybrid microSD card slot
Battery	3300mAh; Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 (9V/2A)
Display	6.2-inch Full HD+ (2246×1080) Super IPS+ LCD with an 18.7:9 aspect ratio, 550 nits brightness, 96% NTSC gamut, supports DCI-P3, Auto Color Temperature, 402 PPI
Audio	Hi-Res audio 192kHz/24-bit standard DTS Headphone:X 7.1 virtual surround sound for headphone support
Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0
Ports	USB Type-C port, dual nano SIM slots (nano SIM + nano SIM/microSD), 3.5mm headphone jack
Bands	GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz WCDMA: Bands 1/2/3/4/5/6/8/19 FDD-LTE: Bands 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/17/18/19/20/26/28/29/30/32 TDD-LTE: Bands 34/38/39/40/41 LTE Cat13 UL up to 150Mbps / Cat18 DL 5CA 4×4 MIMO up to 1.2Gbps
Rear camera	12MP primary camera with Sony IMX363 sensor, 1/2.55″ sensor size, 1.4μm pixels, f/1.8 aperture, 24mm focal length, 83-degree field-of-view, four-axis OIS 8MP wide-angle camera with OmniVision 8856 sensor, 1/4″ sensor size, 1.12μm pixels, 120-degree field-of-view, 12mm focal length Video recording up to 4K at 60fps, three-axis electronic image stabilization (EIS)
Front-facing camera	8MP with f/2.0 aperture, 24mm focal length, 84-degree field-of-view

Asus states that a free pick-up and drop service option is available to all Asus ZenFone 5Z customers during warranty period. Asus service centers will also offer standby handset facility.

Flipkart is also offering complete mobile protection worth ₹2,299 at a discounted price of ₹99. A tempered glass screen protector and case are being offered for ₹229 each.

In terms of offers, Jio users recharging with ₹198 and ₹299 plans will get ₹2,2000 cashback in the form of instant credit of 44 vouchers of ₹50 each which can be redeemed upon subsequent charges in the MyJio app. 100GB “additional data” will be offered, and the fine print of this offer is that users will get 10GB 4G additional data voucher per recharge for the first 10 recharges.

The top-end 8GB RAM/256GB storage variant of the Asus ZenFone 5Z costs ₹36,999 ($538), which makes it significantly cheaper than the 8GB/256GB variant of the OnePlus 6 (which is available for ₹43,999). The 6GB/64GB and the 6GB/128GB variants are available for ₹29,999 ($437) and ₹32,999 ($480) respectively—making the ZenFone 5Z the cheapest Qualcomm Snapdragon 845-powered flagship available in India. The phone is exclusively available on Flipkart.

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Buy the ZenFone 5Z on Flipkart

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BlackBerry KEY2 is now available on Amazon India

The BlackBerry KEY2 is about as much of a business phone as you’ll get these days. Its built-in backlit keyboard and mid-range specifications peg this smartphone as one of the best around for replying quickly to emails and writing longer messages. It launched pretty recently in a lot of places, but now it’s making its way to India. The device is still costly though – Rs 42,990, or $625, via Amazon.in. It does come with Reliance Jio’s cashback offer of Rs 4,450 and ICICI bank cash back offer of 5% along with additional launch benefits, in order to sweeten the deal. It’s still pretty pricey though, and considering its specifications, there are a lot of better options on the market.

 

BlackBerry KEY2 Specifications

Specifications	BlackBerry KEY2
CPU	Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 @ 2.2GHz
RAM	6GB
Camera	Rear: 12MP + 12MP with Dual-Tone LED Flash F/1.8 + F/2.6,  1.28μm + 1.0μm pixel sizes, 4k video recording support Front: 8MP fixed focus, selfie flash, 1080p video recording
Storage	64GB or 128GB with MicroSD support
Display	4.5-inch 1620×1080 IPS LCD
Audio	3.5mm headphone jack, speaker
Battery	3,500mAh supporting Qualcomm QuickCharge 3.0
Ports	3.5mm headphone jack, one USB-C port
Miscellaneous	Built-in keyboard with fingerprint sensor
Price	Rs 42,990 w/ Reliance Jio’s cashback offer of Rs 4,450 and ICICI bank cash back offer of 5%

Having mentioned the specifications, the BlackBerry KEY2 has a lot up its sleeve in terms of features. As a company, BlackBerry has always been known for their security. There’s no end to the included security features on the BlackBerry KEY2. You’ll get a private data and application locker, full control via DTEK over what your apps can access, and even controls over how much power apps can use. It’s a lot more than other Android manufacturers offer on their devices, with the closest you’ll get on other devices being Samsung’s Knox.

The Blackberry Key2 is certainly a powerful device, and at a lower price, there would be nothing wrong with it. However, at its current price, it costs more than devices with much, much better specifications. There’s a lot of unique features on top of those specifications, but are they really worth it? It’s up to you to decide. If you are interested in a Blackberry device but are put off by the price, the upcoming Key2 LE may be worth the wait.

Buy the BlackBerry KEY2 on Amazon

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